All research
MethodOriginal research, free to cite

We audited our own data, and three quarters of it was not what it claimed

What is actually inside the datasets that everyone quotes?

What we found

Our political trading feed holds 5,000 rows. Only 1,190 are stock trades. Three quarters are bonds and other instruments, and 3,972 of the 5,000 rows belong to a single filer. Any headline built on the raw table would have described one person's bond ladder and called it Congress.

Figure

What is actually inside a 'political stock trading' dataset

All 5,000 rows, as supplied5,000 "political trades"What they really are3,810 bonds and other assets (76%)1,190 stocksAnd by filer3,972 rows: one personeveryone else

This is our own feed, audited before we published anything from it. Three quarters of the rows are not stock trades, and four fifths belong to a single filer. Any headline built on the raw table would have described one person's bond ladder and called it Congress.

What we checkedWhat we found
Political disclosures, raw rows5152
Of which resolve to a listed equity1224
Of which are bonds or other non-equity3928
Share that is NOT stock trading76.2%
Rows belonging to a single filer3972
Distinct filers in the equity set61
13F holdings rows116544
13F rows with a ticker in the raw feed0
13F rows resolvable via CUSIP map116544
Quarters in the 13F feed7
Quarters with usable coverage (>50 funds)2
Funds in the latest usable quarter144

Live from our database. 12 rows shown.

How we computed it
  • We profiled every dataset before writing a word: row counts, date ranges, null rates, and how much of the data is dominated by a single entity.
  • Everything on this page is a query against our live database, run when you loaded it.
What this CANNOT tell you
  • This is an audit of OUR data, not a claim about anybody else's. Other providers may have cleaner feeds, and we would like to think they have run this check too.
  • The 13F feed nominally spans seven quarters. Only two have real coverage. Publishing a 'three year trend' from it would have been fiction, and we were one query away from doing exactly that.
Citation

Free to quote, chart or republish with attribution. Cite as: SteadyShares, We audited our own data, and three quarters of it was not what it claimed, https://steadyshares.com/research/we-audited-our-own-data. If you are a journalist and want the underlying query or a different cut of the data, ask and we will run it.

Read next

Educational information, not financial advice, and not a recommendation to buy or sell anything. A late regulatory filing is a paperwork failure and nothing more: we make no allegation of wrongdoing against any person named on this page.